The land of the five genders that venerates trans priests

Pointing a dagger at their throats, they jumped, stomped and knelt.

Then, at the climax of the ritual, they plunged the blades into their necks again and again.

A man in the audience recoiled in horror.

But the dancers did not bleed.

This illusion of invincibility reflected the mysticism associated with the dancers.

They are the Bissus of Sulawesi—a star-shaped Indonesian island—whose lineage dates back more than a millennium.

They are considered spiritual leaders and a bridge between the earthly and the heavenly, as they are believed to embody both masculine and feminine traits.

They are called upon to pray at events such as weddings, births and deaths in South Sulawesi.

To obtain the blessings of the gods, they participate in a ritual of self-immobilization known as ma’giri, in which they demonstrate their powers by leaving unscathed.

One night last November, we were among dozens of people in a crowded red house in the village of Segeri, witnessing the climax of a three-day rice-planting ceremony.

But that night was also a celebration of gender fluidity.

Born with male sexual characteristics and raised as boys, today’s bissus have a feminine appearance.

Their sacred rituals embody both genres:

daggers represented masculinity; the colorful silks, the femininity.

“Within a bissu, there is both the masculine and the feminine, and that is perfection,” said Kahar Eka, 52, a high-ranking bissu, wearing a distinctly masculine outfit of peci hat and pants, a day after sporting an elaborate headdress adorned with flowers.

The Bissus are revered by the Bugis people, who number around 6.4 million people and are the largest ethnic group in the province of South Sulawesi.

Renowned for being master sailors, they hold many beliefs that date back to before the arrival of Islam in Indonesia, which is now the country with the largest Muslim population in the world.

For example, they believe in five genres.

— Cisgender men and women (cisgender people have gender identities that match the sex they were assigned at birth.)

— Men who exhibit feminine traits

— Women who exhibit masculine traits

— Bessu that transcend gender

Eka, known by only one name, remembers feeling effeminate even as a child; but his father, a conservative Muslim, rejected that sentiment.

Growing up in Sulawesi, Eka often observed the bissus and wondered why they were respected, while the calabai—men who displayed feminine traits—were harassed.

According to Eka, the calling to be a bissu came to him in a fever dream.

In Segeri—surrounded by sprawling rice fields and wooden houses on stilts, the traditional architecture of the Bugis people—and in most of Indonesia, there are no conflicts over pronouns, bathrooms or representation.

(The Indonesian language does not have gender pronouns.)

Some women wear the peci and a hijab on top.

Sharyn Davies, an associate professor at Monash University in Australia who has studied bissus, said that when Islam came to Indonesia, it did so with the idea that “God created you as you are.”

By contrast, early Christian missionaries to Sulawesi told locals that they must be either male or female, or they would die.

“From the beginning, they have been able to find their place within Islam,” Davies said.

Eka is an example of this fusion of genres and religious beliefs.

In 2023, Eka completed the Hajjthe Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, dressed as a man and accompanied by her lifelong male partner.

“By performing the Hajj, I wanted to show the general public that even though we are waria, God still provides for us,” Eka said, using the Indonesian term for transgender, a combination of the words for man and woman.

But the Bissus have faced many difficulties.

Following Indonesia’s independence from Dutch colonialism in 1945, they lost their traditional agriculture-based livelihoods as their land was confiscated by the state.

In the 1950s, an Islamic armed movement known as “Operation Toba” (or “Operation Repentance”) persecuted the Bissus in the name of purifying Indonesia.

“They had to choose between living like real men, or being killed or having their heads shaved,” said Puang Matoa Bissu Ancu, the 61-year-old Bissu chief from a region neighboring Segeri.

In the 1960s, they were also victims of the anti-communist purge ordered by dictator Suharto.

Even in the 1990s, it was very difficult to find bissus because they were hiding; Few wanted to be one out of fear and religious pressure, according to Halilintar Lathief, an Indonesian anthropologist specializing in the history of the Bissus.

Today, many bissus fear they are the last generation left.

They know they live at the mercy of the whims of politics and religion, especially in a country where Islamic fundamentalism is on the rise.

Job opportunities are scarce.

Like many transgender people in Indonesia, bissus people are often limited to working as artists, makeup artists or hairdressers.

Last November was the first time that the 22 bissus, both candidates and officials, met, as they obtained government funding for being considered “intangible cultural heritage.”

According to Eka, only four were officially inaugurated.

Ardiansyah Anwar, 25, known as Anca, was preparing to be sworn in as bissu.

Under the tutelage of Puang Matoa and Eka, Anca memorized the mantras and sacred prayers necessary for the ceremonies.

Currently, Anca is one of the two greats of Generation Z, as she herself stated.

The training includes memorizing “I La Galigo,” the Bugis creation myth poem that dates back to the 14th century and consists of 300,000 verses.

There is also torilangi, or what is known as the language of the heavens.

This language does not have its own writing, but is transmitted orally or written using the alphabet of the Bugis people.

Candidates must also understand Bugis cosmology, learn to interpret natural signs to predict the weather, determine planting times and calculate auspicious days.

Additionally, they must practice celibacy.

While a musical theater play based on “I La Galigo” has been performed in New York, as well as in parts of Europe and Asia, the bissus remain relatively unknown even in Indonesia, an archipelago ethnically diverse which extends across three time zones.

The day after the self-immolation ritual, the Bissus walked for hours through the rice fields, accompanied by villagers carrying the rakala manurung, a sacred plow.

The bissus wore white headscarves, similar to the turbans worn by Muslim clerics, and tied them with colored ribbons.

Along the way, children and villagers, full of joy, collected buckets of water and sprayed us with hoses.

Cymbals and shouts of joy could be heard, symbolizing the villagers’ hope for rain.

About six months later, the region reported a better-than-expected harvest.

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